I was able to attend XOHM’s WiMAX launch event in Baltimore yesterday.  The event started with an ethernet cord cutting ceremony (I missed that) followed by a presentation by Barry West XOHM Sprint Nextel, Sean Maloney of Intel Corporation and Dan Hesse of Sprint Nextel.

There were a number of demos including the On the Go Demonstration, the Partner Device Demonstration and the XOHM Water Commuter Experience.

On the Go

During the On the Go Demonstration we rode around Baltimore in a party bus downloading lots of content.  The XOHM guy had Men in Black playing along with a video from CNBC while tracking our position on Google Maps.  Three other laptops were all playing video as well.  I personally had five hulu.com videos running at the same time.  The XOHM guy went to speedtest.com while all of this was going on – we were getting 4 Mbps download and 289 Kbps at the time.  We learned that Baltimore has 180 WiMAX cell sites.

Partner Device Demonstration

Next I check out the Partner Device Demonstration.  There were laptops by Lenovo, ASUS and Toshiba that all contained the embedded WiMAX chip. That chip also includes standard WiFi technology.  What caught my attention though was the Nokia N810 WiMAX Enabled Internet Tablet.  I watched a few YouTube videos on it.  It was definitely better watching YouTube videos on my 3G iPod.  How much better is hard to say, however.  I was impressed as the device also allows GoogleTalk video calls.

Water Commuter Experience

Next up was the water taxi demonstration.  We zipped around the Baltimore Harbor on a water taxi while surfing on four laptops.  Again I tried to get as many hulu videos going at the same time but I got distracted trying to figure out the coverage area.  It was definitely neat to be able to use the internet in the middle of water but it made me think of working while commuting on the boat.  On a positive note, I can see folks who live in house boats and boat based businesses now having access to a reliable internet connection.  While on the boat I learned that XOHM’s current coverage area includes a little more than half of Baltimore city’s population of 2 million.

I thoroughly enjoyed the event but I wish I would have been able to play with WiMAX on my own computer to compare to my own personal usage.  XOHM’s WiMAX comes to Washington, DC, and Chicago next but no date was given for the rollouts.

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